Game of Thrones Scores 12 Wins, Viola Davis Becomes First Woman of Color to Win Lead Actress in a Drama Series

The 67th Emmy Awards new winners in the top categories, Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Comedy Series. Game of Thrones won Drama Series and in the process turned its 24 nominations into a massive 12 wins, making it the new record holder for most Emmy wins for a series in a single season. The previous record holder was The West Wing with nine, in its freshman season. For the Comedy Series winner Veep, it stopped 5-time Comedy Series winner Modern Family from a record-setting 6th win. I think we can all be thankful for that. Veep also ended up with wins in Writing, Lead Actress for Julia Louis-Dreyfus (her 4th in a row here) and Tony Hale (his 2nd win). Game of Thrones saw wins tonight in the Writing and Directing categories and a 2nd win for Peter Dinklage in Supporting Actor, who looked quite surprised. As he should have been, his minimal screentime this season and in his submission had Jonathan Banks in Better Call Saul and Ben Mendelsohn in Bloodline as frontrunners.

Elsewhere in drama, Viola Davis won for How to Get Away with Murder, making her the first, yes the FIRST, woman of color to win Lead Actress in a Drama Series in the entire 67 years of the Emmy Awards. In her speech she name-checked Kerry Washington, Shonda Rhimes and Halle Berry all of whom helped clear the path for more roles for women of color and heartbreakingly opened her speech by a quote from Harriet Tubman (Davis is currently developing a Tubman biopic at HBO). Find a link to her full speech here. The immensity of this can’t be underestimated or underreported. Speaking of Uzo Aduba, she pulled off a bit of a surprising win tonight in the Supporting Actress in a Drama Series category for her role in Orange is the New Black. She won last year but when Orange was submitted in Comedy and she was submitted in Guest. She joins Ed Asner (as hilariously detailed by Emmy host Andy Samberg) as one of the few television characters to win for playing the same character in both comedy and drama.

In one of the most exciting and biggest moments of the night, Jon Hamm, who entered the night with one of the most disastrous losing ratios in Emmy history finally won Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his role as Don Draper in the final season of Mad Men. In seven seasons, and despite winning the Drama Series category four times, no actor had ever won an acting award for the show until tonight. Hamm appeared startled and humbled by his win and the support from the audience was overwhelming.

While the Veep sweep was happening throughout the night, Transparent managed two big wins itself; Directing for a Comedy Series to show creator Jill Soloway and Lead Actor in a Comedy Series to Jeffrey Tambor. Tambor went into the night as the clear favorite and dedicated his win to the trans community.

In the Limited Series section, Olive Kitteridge obliterated the competition by winning every award it was nominated for except Supporting Actress in a TV Movie or Limited Series. In Variety, Inside Amy Schumer bested Saturday Night Live in the inaugural year of the Variety Sketch Series category and final season of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart won Writing and Directing for a Variety Series as well as the newly created Variety Talk Show category. The Voice upset The Amazing Race for the 2nd time in Reality-Competition Program.

When you look at some of the wins here you see some incredible diversity; women of color, LGBT women, women in general all did well this year at TV’s top awards. It’s a huge improvement over previous years and still stands tall above its film counterpart, The Oscars, in terms of recognizing this level of diversity in front of and behind the camera. History making wins happened tonight.

But then you step back and see the acting wins with the magnifying glass of the new voting system. Gone are the “blue-ribbon” panels; that small group of people deciding all of the winners and we now have a voting pool that allows all 19,000+ members of the Television Academy to vote. Many thoughts about how that was going to break down filtered through the internet and the prevailing worry was that there would be A LOT of name-checking since there was no oversight as to what and how many shows a voter was actually watching. And for the most, that’s what happened. While we had exciting new winners in Viola Davis, Jeffrey Tambor and Jon Hamm we saw most winners coming from a pool of recent previous winners. Allison Janney, Uzo Aduba, Margo Martindale (who won last week), Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tony Hale and Peter Dinklage all found themselves on stage once again and it begged the question; is the ‘tape’ process dead? Tonight’s results gave us a mixed bag and we’re going to have to see a couple more seasons pass before we really know but as great as Julia Louis-Dreyfus is, did she warrant a fourth (a la Helen Hunt in the 90s) over Amy Schumer, Amy Poehler or Lisa Kudrow? What about Tony Hale or Allison Janney? Based on submissions, and this is obviously subjective, Tituss Burgess and Anna Chlumsky (respectively) had better tapes. How in blue blazes did Margo Martindale win last week for what was maybe a 3-minute tape in a one-hour show? Again, a few years will tell us exactly how name-checky the open system is but if it gives us diverse wins like Davis and Supporting Actress in a TV Movie or Limited Series winner Regina King then maybe it’s worth sitting through another Allison Janney speech.

As a first time host, Andy Samberg did a pretty bang-up job with only a few skits falling flat (that Lorne Michaels thing was DOA). Slick, funny and up for anything, he spun ad-libs, sang and kept the pace better than most hosts. Heck, the show ended on time, you can’t ask for much more than that.

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Joanne Froggatt, Downton Abbey
Lena Headey, Game of Thrones – WINNER
Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones
Christina Hendricks, Mad Men
Uzo Aduba, Orange Is the New Black
Christine Baranski, The Good Wife

OUTSTANDING DIRECTING IN A DRAMA SERIESBoardwalk Empire, “Eldorado”Game of Thrones, “Mother’s Mercy” – WINNERGame of Thrones, “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”Homeland, “From A to B and Back Again”The Knick, “Method and Madness”

About Erik Anderson

Erik thanks his mother for his love of all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards together since he was in the single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself at GoldDerby, led by Tom O’Neill and then migrated over to Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), headed up by Sasha Stone before breaking off to create AwardsWatch. He is a member of the International Cinephile Society, GALECA (The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics), the International Press Academy and is the founder/owner of AwardsWatch.

2020 Best Picture Predictions

1917 (Universal) December 25
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Sony/Columbia) November 22
Ford v. Ferrari (20th Century Fox) November 15
Harriet (Focus Features) November 1
The Irishman (Netflix)
Jojo Rabbit (Fox Searchlight) October 18
Just Mercy (Warner Bros.) January 17, 2020
The Laundromat (Netflix)
Little Women (Sony/Columbia) December 25
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (Sony/Columbia) July 26

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